1.
It works like this: I write a book. The book is published. I travel, I do readings, I talk about the book. The talks are in classrooms, lecture halls, common areas, university bookstores. I stand awkwardly to one side in my tweed jacket, shifting from foot to foot, as someone introduces me and says nice things, and as usual I want the praise and don’t know what to do with it, and once the tech issues are sorted out I do the talk, settling in, remembering to breathe, reading the room, and as we move into the Q&A, I begin to understand what I’ve written. I can see the completed book begin to change, as other people receive it. Writing is complicated, emotionally, what with the reliving of difficult memories and the unfinished reckonings and the commitment to a final form and the risk of exposure and the myriad ethical questions and the wish for recognition and beneath it all the pure joy of meaningful work, of discovery and purpose, of a practice, and beneath that, like magma beneath the continental crust, is self-doubt, heat and pressure, the liquid rock beneath the ground: I don’t know enough, I haven’t read enough, this sentence isn’t good enough, I haven’t written enough today, this week, this year, in my life. The nice thing about doing an author gig is that sometimes, for a little while, it all feels like enough. Another is that sometimes you get an idea for the next thing to write.